Murder of Ahmaud Arbery
Based on Wikipedia: Murder of Ahmaud Arbery
For seventy-four days, three men who had chased down and killed a jogger in broad daylight walked free. No arrests. No charges. The local police had arrived at the scene within minutes of the shooting, but the lead officer addressed one of the shooters by his first name—a former colleague from the district attorney's office—and left without putting anyone in handcuffs.
It took a leaked video, a viral outrage, and a state investigation to finally bring murder charges against the men who killed Ahmaud Arbery.
A Sunday Afternoon in Satilla Shores
February 23, 2020, was a quiet Sunday in Satilla Shores, a residential neighborhood outside Brunswick, Georgia. Ahmaud Arbery, twenty-five years old, was out for a run. This wasn't unusual. Arbery ran regularly, including through Satilla Shores, which sat about two miles from his home in Fancy Bluff. He'd been a football star at Brunswick High School, known for his speed and agility as a linebacker. Running was simply part of who he was.
What happened next would become one of the most consequential criminal cases in recent American history.
Gregory McMichael, sixty-four, spotted Arbery jogging past his yard. McMichael had spent decades in local law enforcement—seven years as a Glynn County police officer, then twenty-four years as an investigator for the district attorney's office before retiring just nine months earlier. He believed he recognized Arbery from a recent incident at a house under construction nearby. He shouted to his son Travis, thirty-four: "The guy is running down the street; let's go."
Father and son grabbed their guns. Gregory took a .357 Magnum revolver. Travis grabbed a shotgun. They jumped into their white pickup truck and gave chase.
Their neighbor William Bryan—everyone called him Roddie—saw the commotion and joined the pursuit in his own vehicle. He started recording on his cell phone.
The Chase
For several minutes, the two trucks pursued Arbery through the neighborhood streets. They used their vehicles to try to cut off his path. When Arbery turned to run back the way he came, they repositioned. Bryan attempted to block him too.
Eventually, the McMichaels' truck stopped in the road ahead of Arbery. Gregory stood in the truck bed. Travis stepped out, shotgun in hand. Bryan's vehicle came up from behind, trapping Arbery between them.
Shouting could be heard on Bryan's video. Arbery, apparently trying to escape, ran around the passenger side of the pickup truck. As he came around the front of the vehicle, Travis approached him with the shotgun raised.
What happened in the next few seconds became the subject of intense scrutiny. The truck blocked the camera's view of the initial contact. A gunshot rang out. Then Arbery and Travis were visible, grappling over the weapon. A second shot fired. They struggled off camera. When they reappeared, Arbery was throwing punches, still fighting for the gun. A third shot—point blank.
Arbery staggered. He stumbled forward a few steps. Then he collapsed face-down in the middle of the road.
He was still alive when police arrived moments later. He died at the scene.
The Investigation That Wasn't
The Glynn County Police Department's handling of the case would later become a scandal of its own. When officers arrived, they encountered Gregory McMichael—their former colleague. The responding officer's report relied almost entirely on Gregory's version of events, treating him as a witness rather than a suspect.
According to Gregory, he and Travis had pursued Arbery because they believed he matched the description of someone committing burglaries in the neighborhood. When they caught up to him, Gregory claimed they only wanted to talk. He said Arbery "began to violently attack Travis" before the shots were fired.
No arrests were made.
The case landed with Brunswick District Attorney Jackie Johnson. Here was the first of several conflicts that would plague the investigation: Gregory McMichael had worked as an investigator in her office until his retirement the previous year. Johnson recused herself—but not before her office, according to later accusations, advised police not to make arrests.
The case transferred to the Waycross District Attorney's office. George Barnhill reviewed it and concluded the McMichaels had acted legally, citing Georgia's citizen's arrest law and their right to self-defense. He too had a conflict of interest: his son worked in the Brunswick office that had previously employed Gregory McMichael. Barnhill announced his intention to recuse himself, but not before advising police—again—that no arrests were warranted.
A third prosecutor was assigned. Weeks passed. Still no arrests.
The Video Goes Viral
On May 5, 2020—more than two months after the killing—Bryan's cell phone video appeared online. A local attorney, at Gregory McMichael's request, had provided it to a local radio station. The apparent thinking was that the video would exonerate the McMichaels by showing Arbery as the aggressor.
The opposite happened.
The video spread across social media with explosive speed. Millions of people watched two armed men in a pickup truck confront an unarmed jogger, watched the struggle, watched Arbery collapse in the street. The nation was already on edge—the COVID-19 pandemic had locked down much of the country, and George Floyd's murder by Minneapolis police was just three weeks away.
The outcry was immediate and overwhelming. Politicians, athletes, celebrities, and religious leaders condemned the killing. Georgia's attorney general requested the Federal Bureau of Investigation get involved. The FBI agreed the next day.
Two days after the video went viral, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation arrested Gregory and Travis McMichael on charges of felony murder and aggravated assault. Bryan was arrested two weeks later.
What Had Arbery Actually Done?
The McMichaels had justified their pursuit by claiming Arbery resembled a burglary suspect. But the evidence told a different story.
There had been some property crimes in Satilla Shores in the months before the shooting. In December, someone stole rifles from an unlocked car. On New Year's Day 2020, Travis McMichael himself reported a firearm stolen from his unlocked truck. But these were thefts from vehicles, not home burglaries.
On February 11—twelve days before the shooting—Travis had called 911 to report a black man in a white shirt and red shorts trespassing at a house under construction nearby. He said the man had reached toward his pocket "like he was" armed. Neighbors went searching. Police found no one, but security footage showed a man briefly walking through the construction site. He took nothing. The house had no doors or windows—it was essentially an open structure.
On the day of the killing, security cameras captured Arbery walking into that same house under construction and looking around for about five minutes. Then he left and started jogging down the street.
The homeowner later confirmed: nothing was ever stolen from his property. No crime had been committed there.
No evidence ever emerged linking Arbery to any burglary or theft in Satilla Shores.
The 911 Calls
Two calls to 911 were placed in the minutes before the shooting.
The first came from a neighbor, Matthew Albenze, who reported seeing a man in a house "under construction." When the dispatcher asked if the man was breaking in, Albenze said no—"it's all open." He mentioned the man was now "running down the street" and described him as a "black guy, white T-shirt."
The dispatcher asked a question that would prove significant: "I just need to know what he was doing wrong."
The answer was garbled, something about being "caught on camera a bunch at night."
The second call came from Gregory McMichael himself, just after 1:14 p.m. "There's a black male running down the street," he told the dispatcher. When asked for the specific location, he didn't know the street name. Then shouting: "Stop! ... Watch that. Stop, damn it! Stop!"
The dispatcher tried to get more information. Gregory didn't respond. The line eventually went dead.
The Autopsy
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation's autopsy confirmed what the video had shown: Arbery died from three shotgun wounds sustained during a struggle over Travis McMichael's weapon. One shot struck his upper left chest. Another hit his lower middle chest. The third caused what the medical examiner described as a "deep, gaping" graze wound to his right wrist.
Toxicology found no alcohol or drugs in his system—only trace amounts of THC, the compound in cannabis, at levels so low they indicated past rather than recent use.
The Trial
The trial began in November 2021 in Glynn County Superior Court. By this point, the case had been transferred to the Cobb County District Attorney's Office, far from Brunswick, to avoid the conflicts of interest that had plagued the initial investigation.
The defense argued that the McMichaels had been conducting a lawful citizen's arrest of a burglary suspect and that Travis had shot Arbery in self-defense when Arbery attacked him. Georgia's citizen's arrest statute, dating back to the Civil War era, allowed private citizens to detain someone if they had "immediate knowledge" that a felony had just been committed.
The prosecution countered that the defendants had no evidence Arbery had committed any crime. They had chased an unarmed man through their neighborhood based on assumptions and suspicions. When they cornered him with guns drawn, Arbery had done what anyone might do when threatened with deadly force—he fought back.
On November 24, 2021, the jury returned its verdict. All three men were found guilty of felony murder, aggravated assault, false imprisonment, and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment. Travis McMichael was additionally convicted of malice murder—the most serious charge, indicating intent to kill.
In January 2022, the sentences came down. Travis and Gregory McMichael received life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus twenty additional years. Bryan, whose role had been to pursue Arbery and record the killing rather than to fire the fatal shots, received life with the possibility of parole after thirty years.
The Federal Case
The state convictions weren't the end. Federal prosecutors brought hate crime charges, arguing that the defendants had targeted Arbery because of his race.
The federal trial revealed a trove of racist text messages and social media posts from all three defendants. Travis McMichael had used racial slurs and expressed hostility toward Black people. The evidence painted a picture of men who saw a Black jogger in their neighborhood and immediately assumed the worst.
In February 2022, all three were found guilty of federal hate crimes. The McMichaels were also convicted of using firearms during a crime of violence. The federal sentences would run concurrently with their state sentences—the men were already facing life in prison, but the hate crime convictions established for the historical record what had motivated the killing.
The Reckoning
The fallout extended far beyond the three men who pulled the trigger and gave chase.
Jackie Johnson, the Brunswick district attorney who had recused herself after the case began, was indicted in September 2021. The charges: showing "favor and affection" to Gregory McMichael and obstructing law enforcement by directing that Travis not be arrested. She had overseen the office where Gregory worked for decades. The accusation was that she had used her position to protect a friend.
The case also exposed fundamental problems with Georgia law. The state had no hate crime statute—it was one of only four states without one. In June 2020, just months after Arbery's death became national news, Georgia's legislature passed hate crime legislation for the first time in the state's history.
Then came the citizen's arrest law. Georgia's statute, originally enacted in 1863 during the Civil War, had given private citizens broad authority to detain suspected criminals. The McMichaels' defense had relied heavily on this law. In May 2021, Georgia repealed and replaced it with a much narrower statute, eliminating the broad powers that the defense had claimed justified the pursuit of Arbery.
Who Was Ahmaud Arbery?
Lost in the legal proceedings, the protests, and the policy debates was the young man whose life was cut short.
Ahmaud Marquez Arbery—his family called him Maud or Quez—was born on May 8, 1994. He graduated from Brunswick High School in 2012, a football star known for his speed. After high school, he enrolled at South Georgia Technical College to train as an electrician. He paused his studies to save money, working in his father's car wash and landscaping business, with plans to go back to school.
He was twenty-five years old. He liked to run. He was jogging through a neighborhood two miles from his home on a Sunday afternoon in February.
He never made it home.
The Larger Questions
The murder of Ahmaud Arbery and the months-long delay in arrests became a flashpoint in the national conversation about race and criminal justice in America. The case raised uncomfortable questions that extended far beyond one neighborhood in coastal Georgia.
How many times had similar encounters ended differently—not with a viral video but with a quiet burial and no consequences? How many district attorneys had looked out for former colleagues, how many police officers had given the benefit of the doubt to people who looked like them?
The video made Arbery's killing undeniable. But it had almost not been released. Gregory McMichael had wanted it out there, convinced it would help his case. The men who killed Ahmaud Arbery genuinely believed they had done nothing wrong.
That belief—that chasing down and killing a Black man who was running through their neighborhood was somehow justified, even righteous—may be the most disturbing part of the entire case. The McMichaels and Bryan didn't act like criminals fleeing the scene. They stood there and explained themselves to police. They expected to go home.
For seventy-four days, they did.